‘I need to find her and prove myself right or wrong, either way.’
Oh, Leo. She’s standing right in front of you.
‘Find her?’ I gulp as the sudden realization of what he said hits home.
‘I don’t know how yet. It seems impossible.’
‘Probably is. Best to leave well alone.’
He looks surprised at the abruptness of my answer. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘Well, good luck,’ I say in the falsest cheery voice I’ve ever used, sounding like a hyperactive howler monkey who’s snaffled six Terry’s Chocolate Oranges and got into the hidden bottle of Christmas sherry.
‘Thanks.’ He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. ‘I’d best go before I make an even bigger fool of myself. Sorry, George. I’ll understand if you don’t want to do this anymore. I didn’t mean to do that. It won’t happen again, I promise.’
That’s a shame. ‘Don’t be daft. Nothing happened. See you tomorrow. And good luck finding your mystery woman,’ I call after him as he walks away.
He glances back at me with a strange look, like he’s trying to figure something out, before he gives me a wave and pulls his coat higher up around his neck and walks away with his hands in his pockets.
Maybe it’s not too bad, I think as I stand at my gate and watch Leo’s back until he turns the corner. He’s been in the charity shop a couple of times and he hasn’t found me yet. I’m sure he’ll forget all about it soon enough. Our leaflet doesn’t specify that the charity shop is in Oakbarrow, he’ll probably think he phoned a different branch and it’ll all be fine.
There’s nothing to worry about.
Chapter 11
A few days later, Leo and I have been going out every night. We’ve had Santa admiring a bunch of grapes on the old greengrocer’s window, Santa sniffing a bunch of roses on the florist, Santa trying out a new belt for his robe on what was once an independent clothing boutique, and Santa getting his hair trimmed at the hairdresser’s. It’s not exactly filling the streets, but Leo’s given away nearly a hundred candy canes and sold a few extra coffees, Maggie had to make an extra batch of gingerbread reindeers by midday on Monday, and at least one person a day has been stopping to take a selfie in front of the Bedford Falls window.
Neither of us have mentioned the almost-kiss again, and Leo hasn’t said another word about his mystery woman. I’m hoping he’s given up on finding her and that’s the end of it.
Until he walks into the shop on Wednesday morning.
‘Oh, Leo!’ Mary says suspiciously loudly.
I’m taking off the clothes that haven’t sold in the children’s section, nowhere near the back room doorway, and I let out a squeak of surprise, looking around desperately for somewhere to hide.
I do the only thing I can think of. I dive into the household rack and drape a curtain over my head. There are a few customers in and a lady examining a bedsheet nearby gives me an odd look.
‘Checking the rails for rust,’ I whisper.
The rail is a wide circular stand with a rotating chrome wheel where we hang household goods like curtains and duvet covers. It’s just about wide enough in the middle to hide behind with a bit of strategic draping. It’ll take me hours to fold these sheets up again when Leo leaves.
‘Oh, you lovely man,’ Mary says as Leo puts a tray of coffees down on the counter in front of her. ‘You didn’t have to do that again.’
‘Ah, I have an ulterior motive this time.’ Leo gives her a cheeky smile, the kind that would charm her out of her last Rolo. And Mary really loves Rolos. ‘I’m wondering if I can wheedle some information out of you.’
‘Wheedle away,’ Mary says, giving him the kind of bashful smile she used to give the greengrocer.
‘Unwanted stalker, is it, love?’ the lady asks me. She’s obviously noticed that my attention is on something a lot more interesting than rust.
‘Something like that,’ I mumble. If Leo looks round, he’s going to wonder why this poor woman is talking to a curtain.
‘Ooh, if you don’t want him, point him in my direction. He can come and hide in my bushes any day.’
I stifle a laugh to avoid detection and give her a grateful smile for acting like seeing the staff hiding in a rack of curtains is something you see every day.
Thankfully, she wanders away to browse the bric-a-brac. I love talking to customers but in the middle of the household rack, while the guy you’re hiding from is standing a few feet away, is not quite the ideal place for it.
‘Are you the manager?’ Leo asks Mary.
‘I might be,’ she says slowly, casting her eyes towards the household rack.
I risk a thumbs up. The last thing I need is Leo thinking there’s some mysterious manager missing from the shop. Him coming in here is doing nothing for my cardiac health.
‘Oh good.’ Leo obviously accepts her uncertain answer as an affirmative. ‘This is going to sound really strange but do you have a young woman working here, English accent, probably around my age, likes chocolate?’
Mary looks at a loss for what to say.
‘She works nights and does something with the mannequins,’ he adds, gesturing towards the ones in the window. ‘I don’t know what but she was getting one out of a cupboard under the stairs.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Mary says slowly, her eyes flicking towards me again. ‘I’m the manager, there’s just me here and some elderly volunteers who sort donations in the back. We’re a right gang of old fogies. No one young, and definitely no one who works at night. You must’ve got your wires crossed.’
‘Really?’ Leo’s shoulders slump and he looks deflated. The smile he had when he went up to the counter is gone. ‘I was so sure I was going to find her here. Are there any other branches in the area?’
‘It’s just us, I’m afraid. The flagship shop and headquarters in Bristol is our nearest branch. Other than that, there’s one all the way up in Nottingham, if that helps?’
There we go, that’ll solve the problem. He’ll think he phoned Nottingham and be done with it. Thanks, Mary.
‘How about visiting staff? Anyone who might’ve been here after hours one night about a week and a half ago?’
I can tell Mary’s dying to blurt it all out. Lying is one thing she really disapproves of and if she didn’t already have a soft spot for Leo, that cheeky smile when he came in would’ve cemented one. I just have to hope she hasn’t been talking to Casey and cooked up some plan that revealing the truth would result in me getting a date or something. That would be Casey’s unceremonious approach.
‘There’s really no one. We aren’t open at night. We’re all over seventy and like to be tucked up in bed by nine with our cosy slippers and Horlicks.’ She smiles at him. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right place?’
‘I thought I had …’ He thinks for a moment. ‘What if I’ve got her age wrong? She could’ve been older than she sounded, or younger maybe?’
He sounds so hopeful and the look on Mary’s face speaks volumes about how annoyed she is to have been dragged into my lies. ‘I’m sorry, there’s no one like that working here. I wish I could help you more than that.’
He nods, looking so heartbroken that I want to leap out of my curtain and into his arms. ‘Sorry to have bothered you. Thanks for your time.’
‘Thanks for the coffees,’ Mary says. ‘Sorry I couldn’t help you.’
He lingers as he goes to walk away, looking around like the answer is suddenly going to jump out at him from the clothing rails. I shuffle a bit closer to the rail giving me cover. There’s a grandpa nearby looking through the children’s dressing up clothes and he always wants to chat about his grandkids, and if he spots me in here, my cover will be blown.
Finally, Leo gives Mary a wave and heads for the door. I breathe a sigh of relief and go to start extracting myself, but Mary’s got a purposeful look on her face that doesn’t bode well.
‘Leo, why?’ she calls after him.
/>
Bollocks. I wish I could bang my head against the rail. Just let him go. This isn’t something he needs to investigate any further.
Sure enough, he does a U-turn and comes back to the counter. ‘I spoke to someone the other night. I meant to phone the main One Light helpline but I called the wrong number by mistake.’ He picks up a leaflet from the stack on the counter and points to the phone numbers. ‘They’re close together and it was dark and bucketing down. The leaflet got wet and I was clutching it so hard that I must’ve rubbed the ink off. I’ve still got the leaflet but both numbers are unreadable now, so I couldn’t try ringing again, but I got my phone bill this morning and it’s showing as a local number on there. I Googled it and it’s this shop.’
Double bollocks. Many, many bollocks. I hadn’t even thought of that. We don’t have the privacy servers the helpline has. Of course our number would be on his phone bill.
‘If this is about your phone bill, you can get in touch with our Head Office, I’m sure they’d be happy to reimburse you.’
He shakes his head and puts the leaflet back neatly on the pile. ‘It’s nothing to do with money. I don’t care about that. I’d pay anything to have that conversation again. It was worth more than money. I just wanted to meet the person I spoke to. To tell her how much it mattered. And I’m never going to find her, am I?’
He’s really looking for me. I feel a little shiver of excitement. He did feel something too. It really did mean as much to him as it did to me. I wasn’t imagining it. It wasn’t just wishful thinking. He thinks I’m worth looking for. And then the dread hits me because I’ve ruined it, haven’t I? I can never tell him that I’m the girl on the phone. Even if he accepts that he won’t find her and gives up, even if we feel whatever it was we felt when he walked me home the other night again, he’ll always wonder who she was, and if he ever finds out the truth then kissing will be the last thing he’s interested in with me.
He sounds so dejected and I can tell from Mary’s face that she’s desperate to make him feel better. ‘I honestly think someone’s got their wires crossed here. Even if one of our staff had been here at night and answered your call …’ I see the shock appear on her face as she suddenly registers what he’s saying. She looks like even her knee replacement wouldn’t stop her climbing over the counter and giving him a hug. She swallows and composes herself. ‘They would have given you the correct number for the helpline. No one here has the kind of training to answer a call like that. I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you. None of us would’ve taken that phone call.’
I gulp. Mary spends so much time imagining all the ways people might’ve died, she’s probably got some really inventive ways to kill me up her sleeve.
He looks beyond dejected as he stares over the counter. ‘Is that your only phone?’
‘Yes,’ Mary says, her face not hiding her confusion.
‘She told me about it,’ he says wistfully.
‘She told you about our phone?’ Mary says in disbelief, glancing at the household rack again.
Bugger. I knew the phone comment would come back to bite me in the backside. Mary’s still looking in my direction so I stick a hand out from under a curtain and make an empty-handed gesture. I have no idea why I mentioned the phone either.
‘Well, I’m sure there are loads of old phones like this still in use,’ she says smoothly. ‘Your mystery woman could have been anywhere.’
‘I guess so.’ He nods, his whole face looking like he’s just found out his winning lottery ticket is a forgery. ‘Thanks for talking to me, sorry to have wasted your time.’
Mary looks like she might cry. ‘Leo?’ she says as he walks away. ‘If you ever need anything, we’re always here.’
‘Thanks.’ He nods and waves as he goes out the door.
‘Bank! Ouch!’ I stand up and clonk my head on a coathanger. ‘I’ll tidy this in a minute!’
Leo’s going to expect me to be in the bank when he walks past in approximately three seconds, and after that interrogation, I cannot risk him suspecting anything. I rush out the back, skid into the car park and hammer on the back door of the bank.
‘Thanks, Jerry!’ I yell as he lets me in and I nearly knock him over in my rush to get to the counters. I punch in the code to the security door between the back offices and cashiers, feeling ridiculously grateful that Jerry trusts me enough to share it with me, and nearly fall over myself as I slam into the counter next to Casey and come to a halt.
Leo walks past at that exact second, peering through the window. He stops and waves when he sees me, grinning a huge grin that I know he wasn’t grinning two seconds ago in One Light. I wave back through the glass screen that separates cashiers from customers, and his smile gets wider as he carries on walking, not seeming to notice that I’m not at a counter of my own or that Casey is staring at me like I’ve sprouted a second head from my armpit.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ the customer she’s serving asks.
‘Fine, thanks,’ I pant, bending over to try to get my breath back. It’s not far but I don’t think I’ve run that fast since Tesco had Maltesers on offer.
Oh well. At least he’s seen me in here. That’s the first time someone hasn’t had to go and collect me from a ‘break’. He won’t doubt that I work here now.
‘You know, the gym is a lot easier,’ Casey says when the customer has gone. ‘And you get the added bonus of meeting fit guys there.’
‘Did he see you where he was meant to?’ Jerry asks, bustling out from the staff area.
‘He did, thanks.’
‘It’s working!’ He claps his hands together. ‘What a bit of fun. You will invite me to the wedding, won’t you?’
I force a smile. ‘Of course. And I’ll hang onto any hats we get donated in case your wife wants one.’
‘Ooh, lovely,’ he says, like this is some kind of soap opera.
It doesn’t seem as harmless as it seemed at first. It doesn’t just feel like I’m telling a little white lie now, it feels like I’m running a full-on con on Leo, and it’s only getting worse. The more nights I spend outside in the cold on Oakbarrow High Street with him, the more we talk, the more I like him. The more things feel special with him. But how can anything feel special when he thinks I work somewhere I don’t, and I’ve got everybody I know lying for me? I wish I’d been honest from the start. I should have told him it was me the moment I realized it was him in the coffee shop the next morning. Because this – this lying, pretending, hiding in clothes rails and letting Leo think the person he spoke to is a figment of his imagination – this isn’t helping anyone.
When I get back into One Light, the shop floor is empty of customers and Mary’s started tidying up the household rail.
‘I’ll do that.’ I shoo her away, surprised when she actually leaves me to it and goes back to the counter.
I pull a pair of curtains off the hanger and throw one over the rail, starting to fold them again one at a time. I’m waiting for the onslaught from Mary, I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my head, but she doesn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t figure it out after all …
‘Suddenly the missing pages of that book magically glue themselves back into place.’ She crosses her arms and when I risk a glance at her, she looks as stern as a headmistress about to suspend me from school. ‘Let me guess, he phoned while you were working late thinking he’d got the helpline, and you didn’t think it might be an idea to enlighten him?’
‘I told him it was the wrong number, but he was … not in a good place, Mary. We’d been talking for a while before he realized his mistake, and he felt so bad about it that I didn’t want to make it into a big deal and make him feel worse. I tried to give him the right number but I didn’t know how to. I didn’t want to reinforce how awful he was feeling and risk him doing something stupid.’ I yank the folded curtain onto the hanger and start on the other one.
‘Why had you been talking for a while? What happened to the standard gre
eting when we answer the phone? We have to say ‘One Light charity shop’ to avoid any confusion in case this exact thing ever happens.’
‘It was eleven o’clock at night and I thought it was a telemarketer. I’d just stubbed my toe and was mid-choke on a fun-size Crunchie, I didn’t want to talk about qualifying for a government grant for a new sodding boiler.’
‘George, the people who work on the helpline have had months of training to deal with calls like that. You’ve had none. The extent of your training is a tour of the premises that we all had during our two-week induction. That was four years ago in your case, more than I care to remember in mine. We’re not qualified in any way, shape, or form to …’
‘We’re not qualified to talk?’ I snap, regretting it instantly. Mary doesn’t deserve snapping at. ‘Leo needed someone to listen to him. He’s putting on a brave face and being strong for everyone in his life, and he fell apart. He didn’t need someone with four psychology degrees and months of practice in saying the right thing, he just needed to unload how he was feeling to someone neutral.’
‘Someone neutral who has a massive crush on him?’
‘I don’t –’ I stop myself before I deny something that’s unequivocally true and yank the second curtain of the pair back onto the hanger, and start on the smooth plastic shower curtain that slid onto the floor while I was hiding. ‘I didn’t know it was him until the next day. His voice was thick from crying and there was rain pounding and the wind was howling. It was only the next morning when I went to get my latte that I realized.’
‘When you first started here, the volunteers always laughed at how much you hated coffee. Now, there hasn’t been a day in approximately two and a half years since It’s A Wonderful Latte opened that you haven’t come down the road with a cup of the stuff …’ She sighs and picks up one of the cups Leo delivered. She’s left the tray in the back for the volunteers and brought us a cup each out here. ‘Admittedly he does make a good coffee.’
I put the shower curtain back onto the hanger and clip the slippery material in place, then pick up a fitted bedsheet that needs refolding about a thousand times a day.
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